I went out for drinks after work one day in a large group. One of the people I didn't know introduced himself to me as a colorist. I discovered that this is someone who spends their time adjusting colors in movies and videos until they are as true to life as possible. Yes, there are people who make a career of this. Sometimes they make lots of money.
Colorists are artists, but the technology in the televisions we watch these days is creating a new demand: the colorist as repairman. Enter Joe Kane, high-tech TV troubleshooter. As detailed in a story today in the Los Angeles Times, these technicians' star is rising because no matter how sophisticated the wiring behind the screen, it takes sharp human eyes to make the picture look just right.
| ___About Random Access___ Random Access is a daily column by Robert MacMillan that explores the latest trends in technology and how they are changing daily life. Random Access won't tell you why a new gizmo will revolutionize your ad server. It will tell you about episodes from daily life -- exasperated waiters who use blogs to vent about their customers, whole runs of salmon injected with nanoparticles for individual tracking in Norwegian fjords and the growing number of DJs who are sick of being sidelined in favor of iPods. (Only one of these stories is fake.) Most of what you see will be culled from news sources and blogs from around the world, though we will supplement Random Access with original files on the novel, unusual, bizarre and reactionary happenings in the world of technology and society. E-mail: Send links and comments. | | |
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As the Times said, these new TV technicians "rely on their highly trained eyes to coax crisper pictures, richer colors and finer details out of the high-tech television sets anchoring more and more living rooms. Gone are the days when twiddling the rabbit ears would tease a better picture from the snow on the screen. Although today's high-definition TVs render dazzling, theater-quality pictures, the technology inside has become mind-bogglingly complex. An improperly adjusted set can produce jaundiced, hazy, lifeless images."
Every time a new super-high-end technology draws the attention of demanding and wealthy fans, these kinds of experts tend to sprout up. This is especially true when the price tag -- or the love of the activity in question -- induces owners to obsess over minute variations from what they consider perfection. If this sounds unusual, think about audiophiles who need to hear Beethoven's symphonies just so on their million-dollar vacuum-tube sets, or drivers whose amazingly expensive models spend more time in the garage -- getting repaired, tuned and polished just so -- than on the road.
What makes it odd is that technology was supposed to be, at its root, about mechanization and convenience. The less we had to do to get the desired effect, the better. It hasn't exactly worked out that way.
In the story, Kane shows up in Woodland Hills, Calif., to help Hagai Gefen figure out why the image on his $12,000 Samsung didn't seem right. "Everyone in the room marveled at the picture quality. Everyone, that is, except Kane. 'It's not very bright,' Kane said. 'Let's get a reading.' ... As he ratcheted down the contrast, blocks of bright white suddenly acquired more depth and warmth, so what was once a big, indistinguishable block now is divided into bars of varying shades of white. And so it went over the next three hours as Kane delved deep into the recesses of Gefen's TV, unearthing its flaws and fixing them one by one. From the brightness to the gray scale, and finally the colors."
Mark Fairchild, a professor of color science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, told the Times that figuring out the right balance often depends on the room lighting. "So you have to adjust the white to be a little yellower so the two will neutralize each other. Otherwise, the picture will look bluish."
Moreover, he said, using the preset codes on the remote -- "movie," "dynamic" and "brilliant" -- is fine for run-of-the mill sets, but Joel Silver, president of the Imaging Science Foundation (the group that Kane co-founded), said anyone who pays thousands of dollars for a TV ought to rely on a professional to customize it in its viewing space.
As the Times noted: "That's because doing anything beyond the preset modes requires diving into an underworld of sub-menus with a dizzying array of controls identified by an alphabet soup of letters and numbers, such as 'DNIE,' 'DDP1011' and 'CXA2171.' All this adds up to a situation not unlike the 1950s and 1960s, when technicians delivered TV sets to homes and installed them. The job sometimes involved demagnetizing the sets and clambering to rooftops to set up antennas."
That's no problem for Kane and Silver, as these modern-day specialists can charge more than $1,000 for the privilege of customization.
